Dimly I set foot upon the air, I fled, I flew, through the thrills of light, With all about, above, below, the whirring Of almighty wings.
I found a twilight land, Where, hardly hid, the sun Sent softly-saddened rays of Red and brown to burn the iron soil And bathe the snow-white peaks In mighty splendor.
Black were the men, Hard-haired and silent-slow, Moving as shadows, Bending with face of fear to earthward; And women there were none.
"Woman, woman, woman!"
I cried in mounting terror.
"Woman and Child!"
And the cry sang back Through heaven, with the Whirring of almighty wings.
Wings, wings, endless wings,-- Heaven and earth are wings; Wings that flutter, furl, and fold, Always folding and unfolding, Ever folding yet again; Wings, veiling some vast And veiled face, In blazing blackness, Behind the folding and unfolding, The rolling and unrolling of Almighty wings!
I saw the black men huddle, Fumed in fear, falling face downward; Vainly I clutched and clawed, Dumbly they cringed and cowered, Moaning in mournful monotone:
O Freedom, O Freedom, O Freedom over me; Before I"ll be a slave, I"ll be buried in my grave, And go home to my G.o.d, And be free.
It was angel-music From the dead, And ever, as they sang, Some winged thing of wings, filling all heaven, Folding and unfolding, and folding yet again,
Tore out their blood and entrails, "Til I screamed in utter terror; And a silence came-- A silence and the wailing of a babe.
Then, at last, I saw and shamed; I knew how these dumb, dark, and dusky things Had given blood and life, To fend the caves of underground, The great black caves of utter night, Where earth lay full of mothers And their babes.
Little children sobbing in darkness, Little children crying in silent pain, Little mothers rocking and groping and struggling, Digging and delving and groveling, Amid the dying-dead and dead-in-life And drip and dripping of warm, wet blood, Far, far beneath the wings,-- The folding and unfolding of almighty wings.
I bent with tears and pitying hands, Above these dusky star-eyed children,-- Crinkly-haired, with sweet-sad baby voices, Pleading low for light and love and living-- And I crooned:
"Little children weeping there, G.o.d shall find your faces fair; Guerdon for your deep distress, He shall send His tenderness; For the tripping of your feet Make a mystic music sweet In the darkness of your hair; Light and laughter in the air-- Little children weeping there, G.o.d shall find your faces fair!"
I strode above the stricken, bleeding men, The rampart "ranged against the skies, And shouted: "Up, I say, build and slay; Fight face foremost, force a way, Unloose, unfetter, and unbind; Be men and free!"
Dumbly they shrank, Muttering they pointed toward that peak, Than vastness vaster, Whereon a darkness brooded, "Who shall look and live," they sighed; And I sensed The folding and unfolding of almighty wings.
Yet did we build of iron, bricks, and blood; We built a day, a year, a thousand years, Blood was the mortar,--blood and tears, And, ah, the Thing, the Thing of wings, The winged, folding Wing of Things Did furnish much mad mortar For that tower.
Slow and ever slower rose the towering task, And with it rose the sun, Until at last on one wild day, Wind-whirled, cloud-swept and terrible I stood beneath the burning shadow Of the peak, Beneath the whirring of almighty wings, While downward from my feet Streamed the long line of dusky faces And the wail of little children sobbing under earth.
Alone, aloft, I saw through firmaments on high The drama of Almighty G.o.d, With all its flaming suns and stars.
"Freedom!" I cried.
"Freedom!" cried heaven, earth, and stars; And a Voice near-far, Amid the folding and unfolding of almighty wings, Answered, "I am Freedom-- Who sees my face is free-- He and his."
I dared not look; Downward I glanced on deep-bowed heads and closed eyes, Outward I gazed on flecked and flaming blue-- But ever onward, upward flew The sobbing of small voices,-- Down, down, far down into the night.
Slowly I lifted livid limbs aloft; Upward I strove: the face! the face!
Onward I reeled: the face! the face!
To beauty wonderful as sudden death, Or horror horrible as endless life-- Up! Up! the blood-built way; (Shadow grow vaster!
Terror come faster!) Up! Up! to the blazing blackness Of one veiled face.
And endless folding and unfolding, Rolling and unrolling of almighty wings.
The last step stood!
The last dim cry of pain Fluttered across the stars, And then-- Wings, wings, triumphant wings, Lifting and lowering, waxing and waning, Swinging and swaying, twirling and whirling, Whispering and screaming, streaming and gleaming, Spreading and sweeping and shading and flaming-- Wings, wings, eternal wings, "Til the hot, red blood, Flood fleeing flood, Thundered through heaven and mine ears, While all across a purple sky, The last vast pinion.
Trembled to unfold.
I rose upon the Mountain of the Moon,-- I felt the blazing glory of the Sun; I heard the Song of Children crying, "Free!"
I saw the face of Freedom-- And I died.
VIII
THE IMMORTAL CHILD
If a man die shall he live again? We do not know. But this we do know, that our children"s children live forever and grow and develop toward perfection as they are trained. All human problems, then, center in the Immortal Child and his education is the problem of problems. And first for ill.u.s.tration of what I would say may I not take for example, out of many millions, the life of one dark child.
It is now nineteen years since I first saw Coleridge-Taylor. We were in London in some somber hall where there were many meeting, men and women called chiefly to the beautiful World"s Fair at Paris; and then a few slipping over to London to meet Pan-Africa. We were there from Cape Colony and Liberia, from Haiti and the States, and from the Islands of the Sea. I remember the stiff, young officer who came with credentials from Menelik of Abyssinia; I remember the bitter, black American who whispered how an army of the Soudan might some day cross the Alps; I remember Englishmen, like the Colensos, who sat and counseled with us; but above all, I remember Coleridge-Taylor.
He was a little man and nervous, with dark-golden face and hair that bushed and strayed. His fingers were always nervously seeking hidden keys and he was quick with enthusiasm,--instinct with life. His bride of a year or more,--dark, too, in her whiter way,--was of the calm and quiet type. Her soft contralto voice thrilled us often as she sang, while her silences were full of understanding.
Several times we met in public gatherings and then they bade me to their home,--a nest of a cottage, with gate and garden, hidden in London"s endless rings of suburbs. I dimly recall through these years a room in cozy disorder, strewn with music--music on the floor and music on the chairs, music in the air as the master rushed to the piano now and again to make some memory melodious--some allusion real.
And then at last, for it was the last, I saw Coleridge-Taylor in a mighty throng of people crowding the Crystal Palace. We came in facing the stage and scarcely dared look around. On the stage were a full orchestra, a chorus of eight hundred voices, and some of the world"s famous soloists. He left his wife sitting beside me, and she was very silent as he went forward to lift the conductor"s baton. It was one of the earliest renditions of "Hiawatha"s Wedding Feast." We sat at rapt attention and when the last, weird music died, the great chorus and orchestra rose as a man to acclaim the master; he turned toward the audience and then we turning for the first time saw that sea of faces behind,--the misty thousands whose voices rose to one strong shout of joy! It was a moment such as one does not often live. It seemed, and was, prophetic.
This young man who stepped forth as one of the most notable of modern English composers had a simple and uneventful career. His father was a black surgeon of Sierra Leone who came to London for study. While there he met an English girl and this son was born, in London, in 1875.
Then came a series of chances. His father failed to succeed and disappeared back to Africa leaving the support of the child to the poor working mother. The child showed evidences of musical talent and a friendly workingman gave him a little violin. A musician glancing from his window saw a little dark boy playing marbles on the street with a tiny violin in one hand; he gave him lessons. He happened to gain entrance into a charity school with a master of understanding mind who recognized genius when he saw it; and finally his beautiful child"s treble brought him to the notice of the choirmaster of St. George"s, Croyden.
So by happy accident his way was clear. Within his soul was no hesitation. He was one of those fortunate beings who are not called to _Wander-Jahre_, but are born with sails set and seas charted. Already the baby of four little years was a musician, and as choir-boy and violinist he walked unhesitatingly and surely to his life work. He was graduated with honors from the Royal Academy of Music in 1894, and married soon after the daughter of one of his professors. Then his life began, and whatever it lacked of physical adventure in the conventional round of a modern world-city, it more than gained in the almost tempestuous outpouring of his spiritual nature. Life to him was neither meat nor drink,--it was creative flame; ideas, plans, melodies glowed within him. To create, to do, to accomplish; to know the white glory of mighty midnights and the pale Amen of dawns was his day of days. Songs, pianoforte and violin pieces, trios and quintets for strings, incidental music, symphony, orchestral, and choral works rushed from his fingers.
Nor were they laboriously contrived or light, thin things made to meet sudden popularity. Rather they were the flaming bits that must be said and sung,--that could not wait the slower birth of years, so hurried to the world as though their young creator knew that G.o.d gave him but a day. His whole active life was scarcely more than a decade and a half, and yet in that time, without wealth, friends, or influence, in the face of perhaps the most critical and skeptical and least imaginative civilization of the modern world, he wrote his name so high as a creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten.
And this was but one side of the man. On the other was the sweet-tempered, sympathetic comrade, always willing to help, never knowing how to refuse, generous with every nerve and fiber of his being.
Think of a young musician, father of a family, who at the time of his death held positions as a.s.sociate of the Royal College of Music, Professor in Trinity College and Crystal Palace, Conductor of the Handel Choral Society and the Rochester Choral Society, Princ.i.p.al of the Guildhall School of Music, where he had charge of the choral choir, the orchestra, and the opera. He was repeatedly the leader of music festivals all over Great Britain and a judge of contests. And with all this his house was open in cheering hospitality to friends and his hand ever ready with sympathy and help.
When such a man dies, it must bring pause to a reasoning world. We may call his death-sickness pneumonia, but we all know that it was sheer overwork,--the using of a delicately-tuned instrument too commonly and continuously and carelessly to let it last its normal life. We may well talk of the waste of wood and water, of food and fire, but the real and unforgivable waste of modern civilization is the waste of ability and genius,--the killing of useful, indispensable men who have no right to die; who deserve, not for themselves, but for the world, leisure, freedom from distraction, expert medical advice, and intelligent sympathy.
Coleridge-Taylor"s life work was not finished,--it was but well begun.
He lived only his first period of creative genius, when melody and harmony flashed and fluttered in subtle, compelling, and more than promising profusion. He did not live to do the organized, constructive work in the full, calm power of noonday,--the reflective finishing of evening. In the annals of the future his name must always stand high, but with the priceless gift of years, who can say where it might not have stood.
Why should he have worked so breathlessly, almost furiously? It was, we may be sure, because with unflinching determination and with no thought of surrender he faced the great alternative,--the choice which the cynical, thoughtless, busy, modern world spreads grimly before its greater souls--food or beauty, bread and b.u.t.ter, or ideals. And continually we see worthier men turning to the pettier, cheaper thing--the popular portrait, the sensational novel, the jingling song.
The choice is not always between the least and the greatest, the high and the empty, but only too often it is between starvation and something. When, therefore, we see a man, working desperately to earn a living and still stooping to no paltry d.i.c.kering and to no unworthy work, handing away a "Hiawatha" for less than a song, pausing for glimpses of the stars when a world full of charcoal glowed far more warmly and comfortably, we know that such a man is a hero in a sense never approached by the swashbuckling soldier or the lying patriot.
Deep as was the primal tragedy in the life of Coleridge-Taylor, there lay another still deeper. He smiled at it lightly, as we all do,--we who live within the veil,--to hide the deeper hurt. He had, with us, that divine and African gift of laughter, that echo of a thousand centuries of suns. I mind me how once he told of the bishop, the well-groomed English bishop, who eyed the artist gravely, with his eye-gla.s.s--hair and color and figure,--and said quite audibly to his friends, "Quite interesting--looks intelligent,--yes--yes!"
Fortunate was Coleridge-Taylor to be born in Europe and to speak a universal tongue. In America he could hardly have had his career. His genius was, to be sure, recognized (with some palpitation and consternation) when it came full-grown across the seas with an English imprint; but born here, it might never have been permitted to grow. We know in America how to discourage, choke, and murder ability when it so far forgets itself as to choose a dark skin. England, thank G.o.d, is slightly more civilized than her colonies; but even there the path of this young man was no way of roses and just a shade thornier than that of whiter men. He did not complain at it,--he did not
"Wince and cry aloud."